OpenWetWare:Blogs

What's the point?

• Jason R. Kelly 08:02, 12 March 2008 (CDT):OWW started the blogs as a trial when it was clear that the SC could benefit from having a blog. What's the point of user blogs in the OWW ecosystem? Scientists could just get blogs on blogger or whatever - what is OWW hoping to accomplish with its own set of blogs?
• Julius B. Lucks 11:14, 12 March 2008 (CDT): Brainstorming:
  • I have used an OWW blog recently to highlight one of my activities on OWW (see post article). The activity was writing an article on OWW to experiment with OWW as a publishing channel. I have no hard data on whether the blog post contributed to the traffic to the article, but I have a feeling it did (over 4000 hits in about a month). In addition there were lots of comments on the initial posts about this activity. In ithis case, I think the blog post was useful for me to highlight a specific contribution to OWW, and to bring it to the community's attention. I think blogs could be useful as a general mechanism for scientists to create their own 'highlights'.
  • Blog posts encourage discussion unlike regular wiki pages. In the above example, no one voluntarily even left a talk message on the page, but there were plenty of interesting blog post comments. People seem to feel more comfortable with leaving comments on a blog post, and thus the blogs represent an important piece of the feedback mechanism.
  • Having an OWW group of blogs is more interesting than everyone having one hosted somewhere else - there is an interesting sense of community about all the blogs on openwetware, and the traffic of one blog probably brings in traffic to the others. There is no way this would happen if they were all hosted seperately.
• Torsten Waldminghaus 04:06, 13 March 2008 (CDT):I think a good reason to have blogs on OWW is the desired personalisation. It's a nice way to come to know people a bit better and see how they think. For the blogger it's also important because he or she will probably feel more connected to OWW. I guess that is the main reason why every local news paper or radio station has it's own blog-page and I guess they would not do that if it's not helpfull.
• Maybe a blog page is one more stepp into developing an-all-inclusive system where researchers can find and edit good protocols and have a chat and keep their labbooks and discuss and ... . So nothing else you need to be happy is OWW which satisfies all your desires.
• Bryan Bishop 09:17, 13 March 2008 (CDT): Open notebooks seems like a good idea to me, i not so that others can eventually go back and try to copy what you were doing, but also to allow others to come up with novel ideas to solving problems that you may not have thought of.

Commentary on what science blogs might be useful for

• this post generated a lot of discussion recently.
  • a lot of the responses are aggregated here

Science blogging ethics / code of conduct

• wiki from the Science blogging conference - aggregates discussion from the conference.
  • links to discussions about the conference - assuming the link ever loads.

Other science blogging communities

• Jason R. Kelly 08:06, 12 March 2008 (CDT): What's the point of these communities is there any lessons to be learned?
  • ScienceBlogs- run by SEED media, Inc. Bloggers are paid based on traffic and required to post at a certain clip. No editorial control over content (doesn't even need to be about science). Invitation only, 70 or so blogs.
  • Nature network blogs - part of nature. network users can request a blog. I've heard second hand that all posts are pre-screened by nature editorial staff (and need to be about science?), does anyone have direct experience?
  • Jove is starting a blog? - doesn't looks like they've got it going yet.
  • the DNA network - blog aggregation organized by current OWW intern ricardo vidal.
• Bryan Bishop 09:17, 13 March 2008 (CDT): I have a list of science blogs in my OPML file. The HTML version does not include everything in the OPML, but it does shed some light.

Improvements / Issues with the blog

• Jason R. Kelly: Can we get the Author to show up in time stamp at the bottom of the post? (particularly important for blogs that have multiple contributors like the SC blog).

Possible extensions for OWW Blogs

• postgenomic integration
• list of other plugins of interest

Blogs on OpenWetWare

See Blogs.

References

• Good list of existing science blogs